Project Update - Sep-13

Hello again, welcome back.

Now the holiday and wedding festivities are all over,time to crack on and build some more car! 

After the joy of the engine start and first drive, I soon realised that I would have to have a smaller steering wheel. This proved quite difficult actually, as trying to get a boss, quick release and wheel in the correct size to match all the components proved tricky! After several attempts and returns, I eventually found the right items. 280mm steering wheel is laughably small, but means I don't have to amputate any legs, and the quick release is great for getting in and out

Next up I decided to finish off the suspension settings/torque, so went round and torqued up all the bolts, and roughly did the camber/ toe in settings, at least the wheels now point straight-ish.

This led to me offering up the rear wings, only to find the ride height was massively too high - I had to drop it by a good 4" so that the wheel sits nicely within the wing. I decided to have the wing at the height of the lowest the car could be, so that I can always raise it if needed. As a bonus, the top of the wing is roughly right with the rear tub, so all good. 

(Resting on a block of wood on the tire)

Then, had to get both back wheels off to tighten the rear suspension bolts and re-do the rear upright lower bolts - wasn't happy with the cut-off 1/2" unf bolts so replaced them with newer ones and spaced them out with washers to get the required 3mm clearance:

(Much better, old ones I had cut a bit too short)

Then I fitted the front cycle wing brackets, bending them around the tire using 10mm packing strips as a guide

Finally, I could the offer all 4 wings up to see what it looked like!

Pretty good I should think!

I'm now musing about how to fit the front wings, Dave has some good inspiration on his blog. Plus I still need to fix this clutch. Ah well, progress being made again is something to be pleased about.

Short video here: HERE

Thanks,

Steve

Still Aive!

Greetings fellow bloggers.

Fear not for I am still alive and well! As is the project.

I had taken a brief pause whilst mission:honeymoon was taken care of. A superb adventure through the Pyrenees, driving the Land Rover over the mountains. Best highlight: climbing a rocky track up to 9,000ft to get this picture:

But, we are home now, and so the kit car must go on!

I only had a brief chance to return to the workshop before being forced away again with work for a few days, but I had chance to start her up (went first time) and she is purring like a kitten once more.

One slight issue though,  the clutch is dragging quite badly, still. Who would have thought it, leaving the car alone for 3 weeks didn't cure the problem. Drat.  - even with your foot flat to the floor, sometimes it just will not go into gear - it seems to vary between a slight issue to a full-blown gearstick won't move out of neutral... I'm going to try the slave cylinder, because it's had a new clutch and the master cylinder is new... But if the worst comes to the worst it looks like the engine might have to come out again... Very disappointing. My worst fear is that something has gone awry with the release bearing or the mechanism inside the bell housing. Or that the splines have gone a bit rusty and is preventing or restricting the movement of the clutch plate (clutch was installed about 12 months ago and hasn't turned since). Any theories?

The only other thing I managed to do was torque up the front suspension bolts and have play with the toe-in and camber settings to get the front wheels something like correct. I'm not too worried about 100% accuracy at this stage as I plan to take it to a 4-wheel alignment place before IVA to do a full setup, but it was starting to bug me that all 4 wheels are all over the place in terms of alignment,NAND even just driving in and out of the workshop you can see the tires scrubbing a weird pattern in the dust on the workshop floor.

Back to the workshop soon, and more tales to write up soon! Next big projects are the scuttle and all the electrics.

See you soon!

Steve